The Last Gambit

by Om Swami

  But, Vasu, always remember, the more intimate a relationship, the less it is about things or gifts. It’s always the small gestures that make all the difference. Some action that shows you understand, care and love. Words that make the other person feel wanted, important and loved. And gifts often fail at conveying that message.

  Though she didn’t know anything about chess, she would insist that I tell her stories of my tournaments. She would sit in rapt attention and whenever I narrated a story of my victory, she would go, ‘Of course, who can beat you; you are the best.’ But whenever I told her how I lost, she would say, ‘You must have been tired, or are you sure the opponent didn’t play any tricks or cast a spell on you?’ She would take some salt and red chillies and draw imaginary circles with it before I left home in order to ward off any evil forces.

  Uma’s love completed me. Chess was more beautiful because of my wife’s presence in my life. I wanted to win the championship not only for myself but also for her, for my father, and our future child. I wanted Uma to feel that she had indeed married a legend. I wanted my father to know that his son was an icon. I wanted the village to see the emperor among them, that I was the best out there. There’s nothing beyond winning a world championship for a chess player – this was the belief I strongly held at the time.

  Twenty-six games later, Alekhine and I were playing for the winning point in the final game. He had the advantage of playing white. I opted for Phildor’s defence but, somewhere in the middle, his D-pawn began to really bother me. There was no doubt that his position was stronger. There was no strategic loophole when it came to someone like Alekhine, but there was a tactical advantage I had exploited all along. It was something I knew about Alekhine. Something that was both his strength and weakness – he was an aggressive and impatient player.

  I went for a closed game, avoiding exchange of pieces and locking the centre. Our knights and bishops were in the play but mostly blocked. Even forty moves later, only two pawns had been exchanged. Our rooks were closely guarding our kings, and our queens were struggling to make any play on that clogged board. I kept my cool while Alekhine became increasingly frustrated even if he wouldn’t show it. But he sacrificed his knight for two pawns, only so he could open up the board. That one move cost him the game, and the title.

  Overnight, I became an international sensation in chess circles and they featured me on Russian TV. I sent a telegram home announcing that I had won, along with details of my arrival. At the Mumbai port, Uma’s brother came to receive me. I wasn’t expecting national media or too many reporters, but I didn’t think that not one journalist would show up to report on my victory.

  I hugged Ramesh with a wide grin but he showed no signs of joy.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked him.

  ‘We’ve to go to the hospital.’

  ‘Why, what happened?’

  ‘She’s a little unwell.’

  ‘Who? Uma?’

  Other than a brief nod, Ramesh didn’t give out too many details. When I insisted on knowing more, he said everything was under control. The hospital was six hours away from my village. But the village itself was a two-day train journey from where we were currently. We hired a taxi instead to get there faster. Still, it would take us almost thirty hours.

  Just before reaching the hospital, Ramesh told me that Uma had had a premature delivery. She gave birth to a baby boy.

  ‘A boy!’ I screamed in unrestrained happiness. ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’

  ‘But … he was stillborn.’ ‘What?’

  ‘And Uma has internal bleeding.’

  I held him by the arms and shook him hard.

  ‘What are you saying, Ramesh?’

  ‘She doesn’t know yet that the child is no more,’ he said. ‘She thinks he’s in incubation.’

  ‘Please say it’s not true, Ramesh.’

  He just kept quiet, but I broke down.

  Everyone from her family was at the hospital. My father too. They were all silent and downcast.

  ‘Where’s Uma?’

  They pointed towards the ICU and I ran. When I barged in, a nurse came running behind me, asking me to get out of the ICU, but there was no way I would do that. She called the doctor so I could be talked out of sitting inside the ICU.

  ‘What happened to my wife?’ I cried, clasping the doctor’s hands. ‘Will she be all right?’

  The doctor took me outside.

  ‘It was a difficult and painful delivery,’ he said. ‘There’s massive internal bleeding.’

  ‘Will she be all right?’

  ‘It’s in God’s hands,’ he replied. ‘She regains her consciousness briefly, mutters your name, asks about the baby and loses consciousness again.’

  I went inside the ICU. Dragging my chair closer to Uma, I stroked her beautiful face and waited for her to open her eyes. I held her hand in mine and kept looking at her. She looked peaceful but tired. It was the first time that she wasn’t wearing any lipstick. There was no bindi on her forehead, no sindoor in the parting of her hair. There was no mangalsutra around her neck. I had never seen her without all those symbols of marriage, but that day she looked very different. Like a little girl.

  ‘Oh God, if you make her okay, I’ll never play chess again,’ I prayed.

  ‘How could I leave her behind for chess? Why didn’t I listen to her?’ I thought.

  ‘Did you win?’ A feeble voice broke into my thoughts.

  ‘Uma?’ I shouted with joy. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Did you win?’ she said, smiling faintly. ‘How’s our son?’

  ‘Please forgive—’

  ‘Sshh…’ she mumbled. ‘You don’t need to be sorry.’

  ‘I’ll never leave you alone like that again.’

  ‘Did you wi—’

  ‘Yes, Uma, I won, I won.’ ‘Our son?’

  ‘He’s also okay.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll live. I can feel my life fleeing out of me. I see death, I—’

  ‘No, Uma, no.’ I couldn’t control my tears. ‘You’ll be just fine. I know it. You’ve to play with our son, don’t you?’

  ‘Promise me,’ she said, ‘you’ll make him a world champion like you.’

  ‘Yes, Uma, I promise. Please be okay.’

  ‘What if you leave me again for the first woman?’ She smiled. She was softly gasping in between.

  ‘I promise, Uma, I’ll never play a tournament again. I’ll never even go and watch one.’

  ‘Liar!’ She chuckled. ‘How will he become a champion if you never accompany him on a tournament?’

  She gasped.

  ‘I want to be with you, with our son,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to die.’

  I pressed her hand firmly.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong with you, Uma.’

  ‘I think I’m going…’ she barely managed to utter. ‘I don’t want to.’ A tear trickled down her eye.

  She was struggling to breathe, gasping more and more. Then she began convulsing. I ran out to get the doctor.

  ‘Help!’ I screamed in the corridor. ‘Help! My wife’s dying.’

  A team of doctors rushed in and they asked me to stay out. Nurses ran in and out of the ICU. They tried but all attempts at reviving her failed.

  (Master sat there, quiet. Utterly quiet. I hadn’t the courage to speak either.)

  ‘My own queen checkmated me, Vasu,’ he said, chuckling.

  And that’s the difference between real life and chess,’ he added. ‘Unlike chess, it’s not your opponent but your loved ones who conquer you, corner you and checkmate you. My whole life with Uma felt like a game. One I had lost.’

  (Master got up, pushed the table aside and paced up and down the room. He looked heavenwards and took a deep breath.)

  ‘Do you know what Uma used to say? If we have a d
aughter, we’ll name her Vaishnavi,’ Master said without waiting for my answer. ‘And if it’s a boy, we’ll name him … Vasu.’

  PAWNED

  ‘THE FIRST TIME I saw you at the tournament,’ Master said, ‘I noticed how eagerly you were watching the board. I saw how you were trying to read me, provoke me. I saw your impatient eyes. And when I read your name on the pairing sheet … Vasu … I knew. Here was my chance to make good on the promise I had made to Uma.’

  ‘What if I fail you, Master?’

  ‘Not in this lifetime,’ Master said without blinking.

  ‘Two questions have been nagging me, Master,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you think you broke your promise to her by coming to my tournament all those years ago?’

  ‘It was Uma’s birthday. I had to go. I had to find a Vasu. And look what a birthday gift you turned out to be!’ A faint smile played on his lips momentarily.

  I lowered my head. Had Master not shared his past, I would have never known that there was an ocean of love and emotions inside him.

  ‘And how come Anand Sharma is not listed as a world champion?’

  ‘Nandan Nath Upadhyaya is.’ Master paused and then added, ‘I’m Nandan Nath Upadhyaya, Vasu. I changed my name to Anand Sharma after Uma passed away, and moved far away from my village to this small town to lead a quiet and obscure life.’

  Of course. It all made sense now. Till date, the chess world occasionally brought up the topic of the mysterious disappearance of the world chess champion of 1938. The chess prodigy Nandan Upadhyaya who was a world champion at twenty-seven.

  ‘My disappearance had been a heated topic, but with the beginning of the World War II a few months later, it died a quick death,’ Master said. ‘Besides, in a country struggling for independence, the absence or presence of a chess champion wasn’t even noticed, much less reported.’

  ‘That’s not true, Master, many of your wins and strategies are quoted till date. Oh Master, I’m so foolish. I should never have questioned you.’

  ‘I’m too old, Vasu,’ Master said, taking a deep breath. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be around, but let me give you a golden rule of thumb. Whenever you are stuck in any tournament, simply ask yourself, “What would Master do?” and you’ll know what step to take. I promise.’

  Today, Master looked more peaceful than I had seen him in a long time. It was as if a big weight had been lifted off him. I rode all the way back home with his story running in my head. The son that Master never had a chance to hold in his arms, he saw in me. For the last five years, he had taught me without charging a single penny. And what had I given him in return?

  Every time I had lost, like a petulant child, I found a way to blame it on him. I had been living in my selfish little cocoon, having father, mother, Master, Rea, everyone at my beck and call. The great Vasu would holler and everyone would just come running, because, come on, Vasu was going to be a GM someday and everyone must do as he wishes!

  I vowed that moment to reinvent myself, to man up and to wholeheartedly devote everything I had to every game I would ever play. I owed it to all those who had loved and put up with me all these years. I had a debt to pay. And there was not a moment to lose.

  Over the next two years, while I didn’t win every tournament, I won a lot more than I ever had before. Not only did it make Master happy, but my victories also gave a tremendous boost to my self-confidence. I no longer got the shivers when playing against a GM or any other player. Hell, I went on to earn the coveted GM title myself at the age of twenty-one.

  Of course, I didn’t earn that title overnight. It wasn’t like I won one game and suddenly I was GM. It was a result of all the wins I consistently registered, which in turn earned me a certain rating, qualifying me for the title. It was a slow, painstaking process of watching your rating go up and down, stagnate and then climb again. I was thrilled to be a GM, but for some time now all I wanted was the real thing – the world chess champion title.

  But the day FIDE informed me that I had qualified for the GM title, Varun and Mira insisted that it was time for a celebration. All of the hungama at home, and my parents’ happy faces thrilled me, of course, but I also saw clearly what my true aim was. My real redemption lay in defeating Andrei Kulikov. If reports were to be believed, Kulikov, the reigning world champion, had become even more elusive and conceited. He was now rarely seen at international tournaments.

  Kulikov had said in no uncertain terms that he would only appear to compete for world championships. This was quite unusual – all world champions before him had continued to play other tournaments too. But not Andrei Kulikov. He was cut from a different cloth. It was a matter of some discussion in chess circles. I was a rising star and the chess-playing world had begun thinking of me as a mystery. From an obscure little town, with no family background in chess, with no famed master by my side, I had become a top-rated player. Between my own world rank and Kulikov’s, there were only two players. I was certain that it was just a matter of time before I faced him in the world championships. The face off was inevitable. Chess was no longer a game or a sport for me even about winning cups and championships. It was a personal war against my nemesis, Andrei Kulikov.

  Every time the press lauded me for my unique style of play, how I itched to tell them that it was Master who had got me this far. How I wished I could shout from the rooftop that Nandan Nath Upadhyaya was my master. The man who had gone beyond chess and its nuances, who cared not for riches nor recognition.

  Time had passed as if in a hurry to get me to my destination. The gangly, fourteen-year-old Vasu was replaced by a robust one. I was twenty-three now, still in pursuit of my dream. Varun had married the girl of his dreams and settled down and Mira already had two lovely daughters. Father was nearing retirement and Master looked more and more frail with each passing year. I had know him for almost a decade. He was eighty-one now. Yet, he was no less a shark on the board. And my Rea was pursuing her master’s degree in fine arts.

  ‘My parents say that I’m obsessed with painting,’ she told me one day.

  ‘That’s a good thing, because Master says no success is possible without obsession.’

  ‘I don’t paint for success, Vasu,’ she said. ‘I paint because I don’t know what else to do when I miss you terribly, which is all the time.’

  I knew where this was going, so I changed the topic.

  ‘The world championship qualifiers are coming up, and—’

  ‘When will you ask me the question, Vasu?’ she said, interrupting me. ‘I have been waiting very long.’

  ‘You mean, when’s the 70 per cent season-end sale starting?’

  ‘Vasu! I’m serious.’

  ‘As soon as I win the world championship, Rea.’

  My answer hung between us for a while.

  It didn’t take an oracle to know exactly what Rea was thinking. What if I didn’t win? The truth is there was a more practical issue to consider. I wasn’t making enough money to pay even my own bills. How was I going to ensure that we were comfortable and had a secure future ahead of us? How would we go out for a dinner or a vacation if I was always worried about how much I had left in my account? I was still living on second-hand stuff. I had just inherited Varun’s old motorcycle when he bought a new car. I still did not have an air-conditioner or air cooler in the scorching heat or sultry monsoons of north India. But I knew my time would come. Everything now rested on qualifying for the world championship and then winning it eventually.

  ‘What are you giving your father on his retirement?’ Rea asked, changing the topic.

  ‘I won’t be at the party.’

  ‘Tell me you are joking!’

  ‘No, Rea. I’ve to play the world championship qualifier so I can meet Andrei Kulikov.’

  Rea felt that my father’s retirement party was far more important. There would be many chances to play to
urnaments, but father would retire only once in his life. Perhaps she was right. But Andrei Kulikov had dwarfed everything else – maybe everyone else – for me.

  Being the defending world champion, Kulikov didn’t need to appear for the qualifiers, of course. He was the emperor and I was just an aspiring conqueror.

  More than fifty GMs had participated in the world championship qualifiers. I knew I was going to win it right from the outset, though. Because I had to. For Master, for Rea. And I did. I coursed through that tournament like a stone going through water – unrestrained and unstoppable. I did not lose a single game.

  It did not mean that things got any easier. It only meant there was only one thing between Andrei and me.

  Time. Seven months.

  A twenty-match world championship.

  I managed to board an earlier flight after the qualifiers and reached home early. I had learnt to keep things quiet like my master and thought I would give everyone a surprise. Unfortunately, they had already heard on TV that Vasu Bhatt from India had qualified for the world championship. An Indian had made it to the championships after a gap of more than six decades.

  Parked outside our house was a familiar vehicle. I knew I had seen it but couldn’t recall whom it belonged to. I quietly opened the door and walked in to an unexpected scene. My parents were sitting in the guest room. Duggal uncle was having tea. Lying next to a plate of cookies was a pouch-like small bag and two bundles of cash.

  Mira is already married, Varun too. Surely, father, who watches every penny, won’t fork out so much money to buy jewellery. He doesn’t even have two bundles of cash.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said. ‘Namaste, uncle.’

  ‘Vasu!’ Mother hugged me joyfully. ‘I heard on TV!’

  Father quickly cleared the table. He stuffed the pouch into his pocket and handed the cash to Duggal uncle, who seemed taken aback by the sudden rush. Father shook his hand nervously to apprise our guest that I wasn’t privy to what was going on.